Bitterly Sweetly (Completed)

Chapter Fifty-two : Her Beautiful Nightmare

"Her distaste towards us Haydens in a very non-impressive way mainly. I'd expected her to disapprove Neil and Skyler's relationship. But I was quite taken aback by the way she chose to display that disapproval and the quantity of it," she cut short the filthy details. She was not quite in the mood to spoil the atmosphere by uttering Katherine's crap in full form.

Max looked disgruntled. "I need to have a talk with her."

"She also mentioned a Carol and a bunch of bull she made up," Sofia scoffed, swallowing another scoop of ice cream. "It's fascinating how desperate she seemed to create a tiff between us—" she trailed off mid-sentence upon looking up.

Her stomach twisted in fear taking in Max's pale gone face. With his entire form frozen, jaw set tight and eyes unblinking, he looked like a statue cut out of stone and brilliantly sculpted to perfection.

It was like a nightmare.

He was her most beautiful nightmare.

'All you need to do is ask. Ask him.'

"Did you—" She stopped breathing for the seconds to come. Her voice wavered with dread. "Did you go to her at the night of our wedding?"

Max's answer was the shaky breath that came out of his parted mouth; it was in the way his pained eyes looked up at her.

The answer to her question was written all over his face, in bold letters it was screaming.

Bile rose up to her throat. The deceit felt no less than a dagger being struck into her flesh.

Her heart dropped. It felt like a physical blow to her chest and she would have fallen into a heap on the floor if she was not already seated. Only when a lone tear rolled down her left eye was when she realized her eyes had filled up.

He shoved his hands up into his hair, face contorting into absolute agony he looked at that drop of tear. "Sofi—" her name came out as a weak, pained cry from his mouth.

The truth was bitter. And it sucked off every bit of peace and happiness she'd found in the past weeks with him.

Max had always been successful it seemed—in mending her one moment and destroying her the next.

She watched in silence as he slid down to the floor on his knees before her and grabbed her hands desperately. While her face was bare of emotions except that one lone tear that seemed to have fallen a decade ago, his was wrenched with unbounded remorse.

"Why?" her own voice seemed alien to her. It was the ultimate sound of heartbreak.

He shut his eyes as if hiding himself from this reality. "Because I hated you," his voice was an anguished whisper. "Because, I was blinded by vengeance—by rage—by my ego. I wanted to break you—"

"Stop!"

A whimper bubbled up her throat. Simultaneously, the grip of his hands on hers stiffened.

She was aware of his hatred towards her during those days but it was only now she could clearly see—to what extent. The pain was overwhelming, and she feared no other emotion would ever be able to match it after this moment.

Slowly, she pulled out her hands from his hold, with the needles of betrayal digging into her skin all over, relentlessly.

He looked as though he was being tortured in a dungeon as she rejected his touch. It was something in between a tremulous sigh and a hurting gasp that left his mouth at her sight. A broken mess of heart she was and a bleeding sea of tears.

In an involuntary defeated gesture as she bowed her head, he brought his trembling hands up and cupped her face. "I had planned to keep a mistress, to flaunt her at your face. It was my evil scheme to sleep with her at the very night of our wedding and the nights that would follow—"